Jenelle Walker
Gtg030r
A website that I visit on a regular basis is www.thefacebook.com. It is a popular "networking" site for college students, allowing students from different schools connect to each other through their profile pages, keep in touch with friends from high school, and meet new people. The main reason I use it is to connect to people at GA Tech and to my high school friends. The site is fairly easy to navigate and the profiles have a set template and categories of inputted personal information. I have actually even found people I knew from middle school on facebook.
Another website I frequent is www.msn.com, through my.msn.com. I have personalized the site to provide the information I want to see, including the weather for Atlanta and my home town Augusta, GA, and various news headlines. This page is actually my homepage and I can glance at the weather or the news before moving on to whatever page or research I intended on. There are several placeholders for various information that msn gives you the ability to arrange in any way you please. I enjoy the ability to make "my own" msn page and to customize what information I see at the top of the page. There are several color schemes to choose from and the page says "Welcome Jenelle" on the top.
These two pages, in my opinion, are very good examples of customizable commercial web space. Thefacebook is a very organized way to connect to just about everyone. There are several sites that connect smaller groups of people, perhaps within one college or area, but thefacebook manages to connect almost all of the college campus' in America (and it is still expanding). My MSN is a great way for me to get the information I want on a daily basis in the way I want to see it. I get weather, news, and even a daily comic at the very bottom. I think that msn is more successful in that the categories and positioning of the categories are purely customizable, while facebook has a set layout. Facebook would be more effective to me as a user of the website if I were able to decide where on the page I wanted "My favorite music". Both web pages are a great way to connect me to the people and information that I want to see. Msn will probably stay the same in layout and design, but I am more curious to see how facebook evolves as it grows to include more and more college students.
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